12.01.2010

Theme: We Have Met the Enemy …. — Hidden in each theme answer is the letter string NME, which sounds like the word "enemy" if you say it out loud.

Theme answers:

20A: Viral illness associated with a rash (GERMAN MEASLES).

35A: List that comes from the top (DROP-DOWN MENU).

43A: Possible response to "Gotcha!" (THAT'S ONE ON ME).

57A: Pie with a fluffy topping (LEMON MERINGUE).

56D: Foe hiding, in a way, in the puzzle's four longest answers (ENEMY).

Well, so far the day hasn't gone exactly as I had planned. PuzzleDaughter woke me up at 4:30 because her throat really hurt, but we had to wait until 8:00 to get to the doctor. Let's just say there was a lot of whining and whimpering between 4:30 and 8:00. Poor girl. Anyway. I assume she has strep but don't really know for sure because … she talked the doctor out of giving her the strep test. Man does she hate the strep test! She gave him these pouty eyes and he fell for it! Unbelievable! But he gave her a prescription anyway and now we're back home, she's sleeping on the couch, and I'm trying to catch up. So I'm just going to post the grid and the theme here and you guys can chat it up in the comments. See you back here tomorrow.

23 comments:

Awww, hope Puzzledaughter feels a lot better! Poor girl! I just hope like heck it’s not strep. Oh how I remember all those sleepless nights with our sons having croup or strep… the nasties of raising kids. Also those ugly GERMAN MEASLES and chicken pox… ICK!

Nice theme, NME in four theme words = ENEMY (56D), but this puzzle was far too easy even for a Wednesday… and even for an old fogey who’s starting to learn all that crosswordese by going here (CW101).I know I’ve thanked Puzzlegirl for her writeups in general, but today I’d like to present a TOAST for her diligence in explaining all the crosswordese and for putting up that CW101 dictionary. Often I run AFOUL, but it’s those little CW101 words that often are the KEYs to unlock the puzzle for me. For all you newbies out there, take advantage of that real powerful solving tool. For puzzlers it’s a lot like what the Readers Digest has (had) called “How to Increase Your Word Power”… another great resource. Now there’s actually a book published on that.

When we criticize a good theme puzzle, we oft forget that it’s the crosswordese that’s the GLUE that holds everything together.

I couldn't figure out the theme even with the reveal, and I didn't waste much time looking for it. After coming here and seeing PG's explanation I still didn't care. It quite obviously didn't help with my solve, nor do I find it clever or amusing in retrospect.

As for the puzzle, it was simple enough that I didn't need anything like all of the clues. Last week I saw that the LAT was really increasing the level of difficulty. Today, not so much.

My daughter is fighting off a cold too. Knock on wood it doesn't happen too often...all those years of preschool illnesses have paid off.

For the second day in a row I breezed through the puzzle only to get stuck in the NW. Yesterday there were tricky crosses, but I can't really offer that as an excuse today. BURSTS instead of BLURTS, CACKLE instead of GIGGLE, etc.

Thought "Hot times in the cité" for ETES was cool, the rest of the cluing fairly standard and uninteresting.

PuzzleGirl if you remember, one day last yearI thought you had the "cold" and made a suggestion for a cure.

This time I realize it is PuzzleDaughter who is under the weather ... but she is in great care, her LADY LUCK is having a WONDERFUL mother !!!

As for the puzzle, I caught the theme, NME ... ENEMY early since I did it from the bottom up.I often wonder why I do so many of these things using that method.

A few write-overs, trim became SLIM, and cell became CAGE. Easy fixes.

Cold front went over us last night bringing some much needed rain. It's clear now ... but much colder.Only 59 at noon. @JNH I know you would shake that off as nothin' but we Floridians go into hibernation if it hits 48.

A TOAST to all at Sunset!(At that time, I'll take that "cure" myself!!!)

Whatever happened to the love of "breasts fitting into champagne glasses"? (Arthur Koestler and France) Or, "More than a handful's wasted." (Who said that?)

My son almost never got sick (God bless us), owning an immune system he must have inherited from his great-grandfather, who survived the 1917 flu. Or a Great-Grandmother who was the only one in the household to not get TB. However, he got chicken pox twice, both times exceedingly mild, totally ambulatory. This gene was not from me. Of course, there were times I was just avoiding gym.

@PG - hope she gets well fast.

Easy puzzle, though I never found the enemies in the long answers. (Pogo "we met the enemy and he is us.")

Where do you draw the line? Gleaming, AGLEAM. But there's no "ashine." Something is AFOUL, but not "astink."

I too found the theme pretty uninspiring -- I couldn't decipher it until I had all of the theme entries and the reveal -- but there was lots of great stuff in the fill: ACUMEN, LEGREE, BLURTS (what a fun word!).

For the most part I agree with @JW about the cluing, but there were a few gems among the dross: - "Like Fran Drescher's voice" -> NASAL - "School's Out response" -> YAY. Love the fog! - "Dijon honey" -> AMIE (this probably should have had a "?", especially since MIEL, the French word for "honey", fits) - "Red, white, or Blue Nun" -> WINE - "Gambler's favorite woman?" -> LADY LUCK

LEGREE reminds me of The Cremation of Sam McGee, a classic bit of Canadiana by Robert W. Service. Just because the names rhyme, y'know?

There were a number of French coins called ÉCUs, from the Middle Ages up until the French Revolution. Even after that, the name stuck informally for other coins.ECU is also the European Currency Unit, a forerunner of the Euro. It apparently wasn't a "real" currency (not sure what that means), whereas the Euro is. Even so, a few countries -- EIRE, Belgium -- struck ECU coins (not sure whether France was among them). From what I can tell, these coins seem to have been commemoratives and the like; I don't know whether they were ever legal tender.

I'll put in my vote for, it's okay to sometimes have themes that are only discovered with the reveal clue. ENEMY/NME was a pleasant discovery, I didn't BLURT out YAY, but neither did I say ICK. (Not a fan of YAY and ICK, but cute that one followed the other.)

Found this ridiculously easy for a Wednesday puzzle. Brings back memories from about a year and a half ago when LAT puzzles were so easy, RP threatened to drop this blog. (Rich N. responded soon thereafter by increasing the difficulty level to just somewhat less than the NYT.)

Found nothing very stimulating about this puzz... no new words, no tricky clues. Not so sure about EMS. Wanted EMT. Wiki disambiguation says Emergency Medical Services. Whatever.

Thx @pg for taking time to do this blog while taking care of @pd. Hope she gets well soon.

Did not like. "NME" is just not a great letter string accomplishment, and even if it were, only two of these answers do the string thing well (GERMANMEASLES, LEMONMERINGUE)—letter string touching all words.

I commented earlier, but apparently my comment got lost in cyberspace. I ran AFOUL when I tried to find anagrams of ENEMY in the theme answers. Did not work. Also had a problem with AGLEAM. ICK. Other than that, an easy Wednesday puzzle. Liked the NYT way better today. MEOW....

@Sfingi - my high school boyfriend's uncle was Dean Martin. His mother's sister was Dino's first wife, Betty McDonald. They had a great photo album with pics of the early Rat Pack. This was back in PA in the 60's. Everytime I went over to his house they pulled out those pictures. It was kind of freaky, but cool.